Tuesday, August 16, 2011

The Secret Smear Campaigns of Dana Loesch and the St. Louis Tea Party

One of the great things about my recent confrontation with Breitbart and Loesch is that Loesch repeated many of her standard disingenuous attacks and I was able to challenge her directly about them. This revealed just how sad and pathetic her smears really were.

Let's start with one of the more shameful examples. Loesch and the tea party have frequently claimed that I'm "racist" because I "laughed" at a press conference where Kenneth Gladney was called "An Uncle Tom Negro." Here's video of Dana and her husband and fellow tea partier Chris Loesch claiming that I'm "on video" laughing at Gladney being called an "Uncle Tom:"

A few clarifications about the press conference. First, the NAACP was one of the groups at the press conference, but the conference itself was actually composed of several different groups. Zaki Baruti, the guy who made the "Uncle Tom" comments because he believed that Gladney was faking his injuries and attacking the NAACP as a direct result of the fact that tea party and Breitbart's sites were continuously raising money for Gladney, might be a member of the local NAACP, but he's more commonly associated with the United African People's Organization (UAPO).

I distinctly remember being uncomfortable with the term, and in fact the video Breitbart's sites used to claim that the NAACP was "racist" proves that I did not laugh at the claim. In the video, I'm sitting immediately to the left of Zaki (from the viewer's perspective), and it's obvious that I don't laugh when he uses the terms "negro" or "Uncle Tom:"

It's pretty despicable for CNN contributor Dana Loesch to accuse someone of racism based on a completely dishonest claim about a video, but that's exactly what she does.

Second, Loesch also claims multiple times during the discussion that I'm a "paid SEIU blogger." Now I happen to like the people I know in the local SEIU, and have no objection being associated with them, but I've never received a dime from the organization. Yet here's video of Loesch alleging that I'm paid by SEIU and, even more, that I was paid by them to ask Breitbart questions:

So what's the evidence for this claim? Loesch says that SEIU "called me their blogger" at the same press conference referred to above. Actually, there were no employees from SEIU at the conference. Elston McCowan and Perry Molens were both former members of SEIU, and here's the video Loesch was basing her claims on:

So, McCowan, one of the defendants in the Gladney case, referred to me as "our blogger" and the silly tea party claimed this was conclusive evidence that I'm being paid by SEIU. Of course, the NAACP and the Green Party were at the rally, so with similar flimsy logic they could have claimed that "our blogger" means that I'm a "Green Party Blogger" or an "NAACP blogger" or a "UAPO blogger." Of course, I'm none of those things. When McCowan referred to me as "our blogger," he just meant that I was the local blogger who has covered the case thoroughly from a standpoint that didn't immediately assume that McCowan and Molens were guilty (and, of course, the courts found them not guilty after only 40 minutes of deliberation). So, again, a ridiculous claim based on no evidence. I suppose, though, that it's easier for the tea party to try to invalidate me by tying me to one of their grand SEIU conspiracy theories than to admit that I'm just a local graduate student who happens to care about the truth in my free time.

Speaking of trying to tie me to larger institutions in order to promote their unhinged conspiracy theories, Loesch also accuses me of "using Washington Unversity's resources to smear a private citizen:"

No need to post video or links to respond to this one, since it's so ridiculous. Obviously, a student choosing to ask Andrew Breitbart questions on a Saturday afternoon in early August while using my phone to record the conversation is not the same thing as "using Washington University resources to smear a private citizen." This is nothing more than a lame "we know where you work" threat.

Finally, and probably most despicably of all. Loesch accuses me of "stalking her children:"

When I ask her what evidence she has for this obnoxious claims, she responsds, "you've clicked on the site where my children are at." Based on conversations with other tea partiers, I know that this obnoxious claim from Loesch comes from the fact that one time, after Loesch tweeted a link to her Mommy blog from her political twitter account, I linked to that post in one of my blog posts. You can read my post here.

Now, I have to admit, the post is somewhat petty by my usual standards (though it would be typical fare from Breitbart bloggers or the tea party). I took her post demanding that people pay her if they want her to mention their products and used it as an opportunity to remind people of the legitimate political story that Loesch shut out and attacked Ed Martin's GOP primary opponent after Martin gave thousands of dollars to Chris Loesch's business.

Though it is a serious ethical problem that Loesch refused to disclose this conflict of interest while cheering Martin's campaign, I admit the connection between that and her post claiming she requires money for product endorsements is a little bit of a stretch. However, that post I linked too was not at all about her children and was entirely about her patriotic desire to make money via endorsements, so to use this to claim that I'm "stalking her children" is absolutely despicable. The claim that someone involved other people's children is a serious allegation and not something to be tossed out as a cheap attempt to silence critics or demonize opponents.

It's pretty amazing that CNN allows their name to be dragged into the mud and slime by paying Loesch as a "political analyst."

8 comments:

I once used the word "effluence" to describe the rhetoric and bombast used by Loesch. It's easy to see why she attracts the simple-minded people who flock to her every utterance. They are incapable of rational thought or simple reason. The information is out there for them to see but they continue to bask in her misinformation and lies.

It is time to involve Conan O'Brian. This woman has lost her mind. Somebody have her committed, and I'm not joking. I'm serious. Somebody bring her in to a mental ward and have her evaluated. She's clearly delusional and afraid of fictitious things. I'm confident that her repeated paranoid delusions and violently angry vocalizations justify several months in a padded room. She's clearly not merely a harm to herself, but also to those around her. For the safety of St. Louis, and the Country, Dana must be involuntarily committed. -SP

I've been puzzling over this for the last couple of days because thing is, with a modern D-SLR camera, it's absolutely impossible to be unaware of the fact that the lens is obscured. The subject image is visible in both the old-school SLR viewfinder which actually is reflected up through the lens or, when actually recording the image, viewed on a small LCD monitor on the back of the camera.

Hard to tell which Nikon exactly he's got there, since they all look so much alike from a few feet off (and especially hard [laughing] when Adam desn't hold his cellphonecam steady), but I'm guessing it's one of Nikon's video-capable DSLRs from the way he's holding it (like a video camera, steady and away from his face), and probably the D90, since it's the most inexpensive one and a pricier camera'd be wasted on a clunk like him.

So I've been trying to come up with a reason for this guy to hold up a camera he knows is not recording any images, and I finally broke into a smile as I came up with what I believe is the sad truth:

The camera is not recording and he knows it (it may not even be powered on!), but because he doesn't realize that his lenscap is still on, he believes that his subject doesn't know.

Get it? The whole point of his holding the camera up is nothing but a clumsy attempt to rattle the subject a bit (that's you, Adam) by sticking a camera in his face. Again, he doesn't know the lenscap is on because he's not recording.

That is bewilderingly pathetic. 'Course, I could be wrong, so anybody got a better explanation, feel free.

Leaving aside the ridiculous allegations concerning smears and resources, I'd be curious to know who Dana has in mind here as a "private citizen." If she's referring to herself or Breitbart, I'm bound to point out with a laugh that no court, for purposes of a defamation action, would agree. They are "public figures," of course, by their own design.

Loudmouthed, shameless, attention-whoring, pathologically self-absorbed public figures, the both of 'em.

The very air you breathe on a Saturday is the property of Washington University, Adam.

So anyone who clicks on Dana's mom blog is now a stalker? Dana darling, when you write in great detail about your children for a number of years on THE INTERNET, suddenly "protecting" them from "stalkers" doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Then again, I haven't any idea why I would expect you to start making sense.

"Defendant is hereby ordered to not, at any time or for any purpose, view content freely provided to the public on defendant's web page. Likewise, defendant may not read Plaintiff's printed commentary in newspapers or books, or view Plaintiff's cable television appearances."

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